lieberman Blog Wars

For evidence of all the anger and emotions swirling around Joe Lieberman’s re-election campaign, one need look no further than the nastly little spat playing out in the blogosphere (where else?) between political strategists David Sirota and Dan Gerstein

First Gerstein responds to Sirota’s op-ed in the Hartford Courant arguing that Lieberman is an “out-of-the-mainstream” Democrat.

To my knowledge, the closest he’s come to spending any meaningful time in Connecticut is interviewing for a job in Joe Lieberman’s Senate office (with yours truly) and in his Presidential campaign in 2003.

Yes, that’s right: the same guy who is viciously attacking Joe Lieberman as the great Satan of the Democratic Party actually sought not one but two jobs from the target of his hatred, and did so at time when all of the supposed sins that Sirota is attacking Lieberman for now were well known. The polite term for that would be chutzpah. Some one less charitable might call Sirota a fraud.

“Instead of actually having a debate over Lieberman’s record, Lieberman is having his consultant blast out lies about me personally, disparage progressive heroes like Bernie Sanders and try to paint Jews opposing Lieberman as anti-Israel or anti-semitic.”

Sirota did not take himself out of the running for that job, but was rejected by the campaign, something that was confirmed to me by a person with firsthand knowledge of the interview. That same person noted that when Sirota was asked why someone who seemed so liberal wanted to work for Joe Lieberman, “he specifically said that he was excited to have a Jew in the White House.”

This is the sort of thing that could go on ad infinitum. In fact, Gerstein just pointed out to us that the same blog has a report on Bill Clinton’s remarks in Aspen last week, which seem supportive of Lieberman.